The Canada Food Guide hasn’t been updated since 2007. Officials have been saying for months that a new version will be released this year, but we haven’t seen anything yet, and in the meantime unhealthy foods like flavoured milk and fruit juice are still within the government’s official guidelines.

Not every parent may consult it every day, but the food guide is still an important document that food producers can use to market their products and schools and day care facilities rely on to shape their decisions. So why is it taking so long to provide an update? As Dr. Yoni Freedhoff pointed out this week on Ottawa Today, in the digital age, we don’t need to publish an entirely new edition of the food guide every decade. It can be a virtual document that is updated whenever changes are appropriate based on the latest research.

We could have stopped having juice considered a fruit years ago, rather than wait until a document makes its way through the government bureaucracy. It’s time to update not just the food guide, but the approach we take to producing it.

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